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IFLScience
Type of site
Science news and education
Available inEnglish
OwnerLabX Media Group
FounderElise Andrew
EditorJohannes Van Zijl
URLiflscience.com
LaunchedMarch 2012 (2012-03)
Current statusActive

IFLScience (formerly I Fucking Love Science) is a popular-science media website and brand that publishes news and educational content on topics including physics, biology, astronomy, health, and the environment. Originally a Facebook page started by Elise Andrew in 2012, it subsequently developed into a professional news website with full time salaried staff.

History

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IFLScience began as a Facebook page created by Elise Andrew in March 2012.[1] Though she had not intended it to grow beyond "posting to a few dozen of [her] friends",[2] the page rapidly gained attention for its informal tone and shareable science facts. After the first day, the page had over 1,000 likes and passed 1 million likes in September 2012. Andrew stated that this work ultimately led LabX Media Group, a Canadian science-media publisher, to hire her as a social media content manager that same year.[2] The next year, the website iflscience.com was launched[by whom?] to expand beyond social-media posts into longer-form articles and digital editorial content. By January 2015, the page's Facebook had risen to 19.5 million likes.[3]

In May 2020, Andrew renamed the company from "I Fucking Love Science" to "IFLScience", citing the swear word's incompatibility with Facebook's monetization systems, and saying that "much as I love the name, I love my staff more".[4] LabX Media Group acquired then IFLScience in September that year.[5]

Audience and reach

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According to its own "About" page, IFLScience "reaches over 10 million monthly global visitors through our website and 60 million globally through our social-media channels".[6] Independent web-analytics firm SEMrush reports that in September 2025 the site received about 7.12 million visits globally, about 78% of which were from the United States.[7]

Content

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According to New York Magazine in 2016, the IFLScience Facebook page "often posts the type of viral science 'wins' that people love — cool pictures of space, crazy experiments, dinosaur discoveries".[8]

Reception

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The European Union of Science Journalist Associations stated in 2017 that IFLScience regularly achieved virality for their stories, which they said was known for "provoking headlines, short copy and rewriting of stories from other science media".[9] Under the ownership of Elise Andrew, IFLScience was criticised for its use of clickbait headlines,[10] of images without credit or without permission of their creators,[11][12][13] and of out-of-context images that failed to support claims that IFLScience made in their captions.[14] In 2014, an article by MIT's Knight Science Journalism, a program which seeks to "advance science journalism in the public interest," found that content appearing on IFLS was "error-prone" and that false and misleading statements remained even after editorial staff were alerted of the issues. The article ultimately asserted that when mistakes are pointed out "they are rarely corrected".[14] New York Magazine wrote in 2016 that "people who get most of their news filtered through IFLScience are often doing themselves a disservice, and when they share those posts, they're usually doing others a disservice as well", and the IFLScience Facebook page was "consistently criticized for willful misrepresentation of the science that it claims to 'fucking love'".[8] That year, Time Magazine quoted Andrew's response to criticism: "I'm not trying to teach people about science" and "I'm trying to give people that moment where they say, O.K., this is interesting, and I WANT to learn more".[8][15]

Awards

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In 2014, IFLScience was nominated for[16] and became a finalist in the 6th Annual Shorty Awards in the category of Science[17] and in 2016, won the Science category at the 8th Shorty Awards.[18] In 2023, Katy Evans, the managing editor of IFLScience, won the "editor of the year" award from the Association of British Science Writers.[19]

References

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  1. ^ Stoianovici, Alex. "Mad about science. Interview with Elise Andrew, creator of I Fucking Love Science". Features. Science World. Archived from the original on April 16, 2013. Retrieved March 30, 2013.
  2. ^ a b Hudson, Richard (September 24, 2012). "Interview with Elise Andrew". The Chemical Blog. Archived from the original on March 23, 2013. Retrieved March 30, 2013.
  3. ^ "Northeast Conference on Science & Skepticism 2014". Reasonable New York. Archived from the original on February 1, 2014. Retrieved January 20, 2014.
  4. ^ Andrew, Elise. "IFLScience - ANNOUNCEMENT | Facebook | By IFLScience | Greetings. It is I, the owner & founder of IFLS with a very important announcement. Well, it's important to me anyway. WATCH IT. PS Please forgive me..." Facebook. Retrieved July 27, 2022.
  5. ^ "IFLScience 2025 Company Profile – Acquisition September 2020". PitchBook. Retrieved October 19, 2025.
  6. ^ "About – IFLScience". Retrieved October 19, 2025.
  7. ^ "iflscience.com Website Traffic, Ranking, Analytics (September 2025)". Semrush. October 11, 2025. Retrieved October 22, 2025.
  8. ^ a b c Feldman, Brian (March 16, 2016). "Hey, Don't Trust That Facebook Page You Love So Much". Intelligencer. Retrieved October 21, 2025.
  9. ^ "Monitoring science stories on social media". EUSJA. December 23, 2017. Retrieved October 21, 2025.
  10. ^ Oran, Nicole (August 18, 2015). "When science meets clickbait: IFLScience is getting some heat". MedCity News. Retrieved October 21, 2025.
  11. ^ Morris, Kevin (April 24, 2013). "I F**king Love Science and Facebook's problem with content theft". The Daily Dot. Retrieved September 22, 2021.
  12. ^ Wild, Alex (April 23, 2013). "Facebook's "I F*cking Love Science" does not f*cking love artists". Compound Eye. Scientific American. Retrieved April 23, 2013.
  13. ^ Weisblott, Marc. "Science blogger accused of stealing images". o.canada.com. Archived from the original on April 29, 2015. Retrieved January 28, 2014.
  14. ^ a b Drake, Nadia (September 4, 2014). "Guest Post: Elise Andrew, science popularizer with a spotty attribution record, gets a pass from CJR". Knight Science Journalism @MIT. Retrieved October 21, 2025.
  15. ^ "The 30 Most Influential People on the Internet". Time. March 16, 2016. Retrieved October 21, 2025 – via Yahoo News.
  16. ^ Lee, Ashley (February 24, 2014). "Shorty Awards 2014: Nominees". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved October 19, 2025.
  17. ^ "IFLScience – The Shorty Awards". Shorty Awards. Retrieved October 19, 2025.
  18. ^ "Winner – Science, 8th Annual Shorty Awards". Shorty Awards. Retrieved October 19, 2025.
  19. ^ "ABSW Awards 2023: The Winners". Association of British Science Writers. Retrieved October 21, 2025.
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